“But you never get to see things over time, do you?” I ask. “I don’t mean to cancel out what you just said. I think I understand that. But you’ve never had a friend that you’ve known day in and day out for ten years. You’ve never watched a pet grow older. You’ve never seen how messed up a parent’s love can be over time. And you’ve never been in a relationship for more than a day, not to mention for more than a year.”

“But I’ve seen things,” he says. “I’ve observed. I know how it works.”

“From the outside?” I’m really trying to get my mind around this, but it’s hard. Blue looks different. “I don’t think you can know from the outside.”

“I think you underestimate how predictable some things can be in a relationship.”

I should’ve known we’d get here. I should’ve known this would come up. He met me as Justin, after all. He knows the deal. Or thinks he does.

I need to make it clear. “I love him,” I say. “I know you don’t understand, but I do.”

“You shouldn’t. I’ve seen him from the inside. I know.”

“For a day,” I point out. “You saw him for a day.”

“And for a day, you saw who he could be. You fell more in love with him when he was me.”

This is very hard to hear. I don’t know if it’s true or not. If you’d asked me yesterday, maybe yes. If you ask me now, after Girl Scout cookies, maybe no.

He goes for my hand. But I can’t do it. It’s committing too much. “No,” I say. “Don’t.”

He doesn’t.

“I have a boyfriend,” I go on. “I know you don’t like him, and I’m sure there are moments when I don’t like him, either. But that’s the reality. Now, I’ll admit, you have me actually thinking that you are, in fact, the same person who I’ve now met in five different bodies. All this means is that I’m probably as insane as you are. I know you say you love me, but you don’t really know me. You’ve known me a week. And I need a little more than that.”

“But didn’t you feel it that day? On the beach? Didn’t everything seem right?”

Yes. Everything within me jumps to that one word: yes. It did seem right. But that was feeling. All feeling. I still cannot speak to any fact.

But I cannot withhold my answer, either. So I tell him, “Yes. But I don’t know who I was feeling that for. Even if I believe it was you, you have to understand that my history with Justin plays into it. I wouldn’t have felt that way with a stranger. It wouldn’t have been so perfect.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s my point. I don’t.”

I shouldn’t have left Justin. I shouldn’t have made an excuse to go. This is too dangerous, because none of it can be fact.

I look down at my phone. I haven’t been here long, but it’s getting close to too long.

“I have to make it back for dinner,” I tell him. Technically correct. If I want to get back in time, I should be leaving now.

I’m thinking he’ll put up a fight. Justin would put up a fight. He’d make it clear he wanted me to stay.

But A lets me go.

“Thanks for driving all this way,” he says.

Should I tell him he’s welcome? What does that even mean? Welcome to what?

“Will I see you again?” he asks.

I don’t have the heart to say no. Because there’s a part of my heart that wants to stay, and will stay with him until I come to get it back.

I nod.

“I’m going to prove it to you,” he tells me. “I’m going to show you what it really means.”

“What?”

“Love.”

No. I am scared of that.

I am scared of all of this.

But I don’t tell him that. I tell him goodbye instead—the kind of goodbye that’s never, ever final.

Chapter Nine

I remember the way everyone reacted when I got together with Justin, when we became a thing. They didn’t think I was paying attention, but I was.

Rebecca told me I could do better. She told me Justin could never really care about anyone because he didn’t really care about himself. She said I deserved to be with someone who had his shit together. I told her I didn’t know anyone who had their shit together, including her. She told me she was going to pretend I hadn’t said that. She told me I was smarter than I thought I was, but I always liked to prove myself stupid by making bad decisions. I told her I loved him anyway, and my use of the word love surprised us both. I held up; she backed down.

Preston said he was happy for me, and when I asked him why, he told me it was because I had found something meaningful. He didn’t think Justin was unworthy of my love, because he believed everyone was worthy of love. “He needs you, and that’s not a bad thing,” he told me. “We all need somewhere to put our love.” I remember liking this thought—that I had this certain amount of love that I needed to store someplace, and I’d decided to keep some of it in Justin.

Steve said Justin was decent.

Stephanie said she wasn’t sure.

I don’t think any of them—even Preston—expected it to last longer than a month. Any love I stored in Justin would ultimately be given away, lost in a fire, left by the side of the road.

And if this was their reaction to Justin, I couldn’t imagine what they would say if I told them about A.